One of the missions of the 301st Trans (Fort Ord CA) was a general support of the depot activities in the western USA. One of the depots we saw a lot of was just outside Stockton, CA, in Lathrop. They transferred material and equipment from one depot to another, or to ports, or to end users. It usually meant a mission for about 15 tractor trailers lasting a week or more. It was TDY for the drivers (that meant extra money...), so these runs were pretty popular.
The other mission of the 301st was direct support for the 7th Infantry Division. That was a more "Army-like" job...and it involved missions as simple as delivering ammunition to training areas up to long range missions moving whole units to training sites all over the 6th Army area (most of the western USA).
One of my missions with the 301st involved picking up an aviation unit's "rolling stock". all of it's tactical vehicles, trailers, and vans....and transporting them to Gowan Field just outside of Boise, Idaho. It was in January, I think, when we went up to bring them back. The weather in Seaside, CA was balmy...but not so in Idaho. We warned all our soldiers to pack for serious cold. There wasn't a weather channel then...or an internet...but calls to the Highway Patrols of Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and California got us a pretty good picture of what the roads were like. First night out we stayed in Reno....hehehe...at Sam's expense ! It was nippy in the morning when we left out for Boise. We stayed the next night in Winnemucca (sp?)...because...I don't know...the guy who set up the itinerary didn't like to travel much, I guess.
The next morning the temperature in Winnemucca was just about 0 degrees. The California Diesel in our trucks was as thick as Grandma's milk gravy. We scheduled a 0500 (that's 5:00 AM...and for Geez...ah, well, he claims he can tell time...) departure but by sun-up, around 0630, we only had about a quarter of the trucks started. We got out of there with all trucks before lunch, barely, and decided to spend the night in Nampa. The Best Western that we stayed in was a converted Safeway store. There was about four feet of snow piled up around the parking lot and it was tight getting in and out. That night we were smarter, we had someone start all the trucks every two hours...which delighted the other guests at the motel. I was driving one of the tractor trailers, they were all M915's, an industry-class prime mover with a 41' flat bed trailer. ( I was required to take a "control" vehicle on every convoy. We had an M151 1/4 ton jeep for that purpose but it could not keep up with the semis. So I loaded the jeep on the back of of an extra semi and carried it along) I was parked on the right side of another rig so I didn't have enough room for a good turn. It was just packed up snow on the island so I dragged the trailer through it and headed for the driveway.
We got to Gowan, and spent most of the day getting loaded. The aviation unit's personnel had left on buses the day before, they left a couple of mechanics with no equipment to help us load 20 tractor-trailers. Typical. Most of the equipment we were supposed to load wouldn't start (5 below zero...wind chill about 25 below). we had to find one or two that would start, and then use them to pull the others around to get them loaded. We returned to the same motel in Nampa and planned on kicking out early the next morning.
That night the phones were weird. I dialed my home number and was talking with my wife when one of the guys in another room picked up his phone and said Hi. Later my phone rang and I answered it into the middle of a conversation between another couple. The next morning we were laughing about the phones and making fun of each other as we approached the trucks. One of my squad leaders tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the island next to where I was parked...smashed flat under the tracks of a semi trailer and half covered with a mountain of snow were the green telephone boxes for the motel. Oops.
The trip back was where this article got its name. The wind in Nampa was bad, but heading out of town it got worse and through the corner of Oregon and down into Northern Nevada it got really rough. Somewhere in that corner of Oregon we came to a cut in the mountain that had straight sides about thirty feet high on each side. I was the second truck behind a civilian hauler pulling half a mobile home. When he got to the mouth of the cut, the wind whipped that mobile home right up off the ground and it sailed like a kite for a few seconds. When I got to the mouth of the cut, the mobile home had already found a place to pull off the highway. The wind hit me and slowed the truck down a good ten miles an hour. About ten minutes later the wind gusted and slammed the mirror brackets flat against the side of my truck.
We usually fueled in Reno, our last night out, always. I checked fuel when we got to Winnamucca, had more than 3/4 tank and decided to press on to Reno. Bad decision. Before we were half way to Reno I had semis calling me on the CB worried about fuel. I was on fumes with still twenty some miles to go to get to Sparks. I pulled over and found a five gallon can in the 2 1/2 ton truck I was carrying and a piece of hose and syphoned fuel from the deuce and a half and put about 15 gallons into my truck. By the time I was done, almost every other semi had pulled off the road behind me and were transferring fuel , too. I was fozen solid by the time I got back in the cab. The wind was blowing so hard at this point that it was a struggle to build up speed to get back on the highway. I couldn't get more than about 45 mph. The truck I had on my trailer was some sort of commo van or something but a lot of the others were regular deuce-and-a-half' s and their tarps were shredded; lots of mirrors were damaged, some of the glass broken, and some parts were just gone.
These trips across Nevada, eastern Oregon, Idaho and parts of Utah impressed me because I had always thought of the southwest as the empty places. I was familiar with Arizona and New Mexico and souther Nevada but always pictured Oregon and Idaho as green, plushy places. It really doesn't matter what you call it...empty is empty and when it is empty, there ain't nothing to stop that cold wind from blowing.